Changes to cost homes, small businesses

Households and small businesses will be blocked from getting the broadband competition offered to big corporate customers under changes to the legislation covering the national broadband network.

The change was one of several finalised by federal Parliament ­yesterday to cement the powers of the company building the network, NBN Co, to help it to overcome threats from rivals.

Other amendments will make it an offence to build a competing network that offers a retail broadband service, enforceable with a $2.2 million fine.

Industry executives are analysing the changes amid ­concern about the long-term consequences of amendments that were introduced last Wednesday, adjusted by the Senate late on Friday night, and sealed by the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon.

Some of the Senate amendments scaled back the government’s initial changes, putting limits on NBN Co in ways that reassured phone companies that will have to connect to the monopoly wholesale network.

South Australian independent Nick Xenophon successfully amended the government plan to ensure NBN Co cannot give some of its telco customers lower prices than others through volume discounts.

Liberal MP and former Optus executive Paul Fletcher praised ­Senator Xenophon, but said the ­government should have drafted ­better rules when the bills were released last year.

One amendment approved by ­Parliament yesterday empowers NBN Co to refuse to connect a broadband provider outside the 121 points-of-interconnect already set – giving wholesale customers no recourse to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Another amendment would allow NBN Co to bundle services without authorisation from the ACCC, giving it a lever to require customers to take one product on the condition that they paid for others as well.